Batman started off as a comic book super hero back in the 1930’s. The comic book hero was published by DC Comics and continued to stay a regular published comic for quite sometime. As we all know Batman’s real identity is Bruce Wayne and he is a wealthy industrialist that resides in Gotham City. I am just going to give you the run down on the Joker from all of the Batman movies since this tutorial is really on how to draw Heath Ledger as Joker. Now in the first Batman, it shows Bruce Wayne as a child witnessing his parents getting shot down by Jack Napier who robbed them after they were coming out of a theater were the family had just got done watching a flick. Bruce’s thoughts of that night haunt him everyday. As you know Bruce is Batman, so while he was on an investigation on a villain that has been terrorizing the city, he noticed similarities between the Joker and the man that killed his parents. Eventually he came to the conclusion that the Joker was infact Jack Napier. The joker is described as being a homicidal maniac that goes on killing sprees leaving behind a path of death and destruction. Even though the character of the Joker was only portrayed in the first Batman movie, we get to see him again in the fifth installment to the Batman series. This time the Joker is portrayed in the sequel to Batman Begins and the new movie is called The Dark Knight. Heath Ledger plays the Joker like you never seen him before. He is dark, scary, cruel, and full of evil. Some say that when Heath was playing the Joker in this film, his true dark side was shinning threw in an eerie way. He also played in many other films such as Candy, Monsters Ball, A Knights Tale, 10 Things I hate About You, Brokeback Mountain, The Brothers Grim, I’m Not There. He played many other roles as well; these are just the movies I’ve seen him in. I sketched this tutorial of Heath Ledger because he died around the same time the movie was due to be released. I liked him as an actor and I also thought he was a very good looking man. So I hope you all enjoy this tutorial on how to draw Heath Ledger as the Joker form the new Batman movie The Dark Knight that is being released on July 18th of this year. The instructions are very thorough and detailed to help explain the weird looking shapes and guidelines. Have Fun.

How To Draw Heath Ledger As The Joker from Dark Knight

STEP 1.

In this step we will begin by drawing a large circle for the features of the face to be placed. We will roughly start to sketch out the bottom parts of the eye and the shadow of the nose. Notice* we are drawing the shadows of the face as well. This is the reason for the squiggly lines and large empty areas :D.

STEP 2.

Start drawing the upper part of the eye as well. Make the lines jagged to make it look like eyebrows. Inside that empty eye area, draw the left hidden eyelid. At the right side in the empty area, draw a more of a visible eyelid. As you can see the rest of the area is void. We will color it in later. Start with lumpy lines for the joker's lips. At the right side of this large lumpy line, draw empty deformed shapes. These shapes will be filled in later to make a nice dark and shadowy effect.

STEP 3.

Now we will start making random lines seeping in from the sides of the image. I know the emptiness makes the image look ridiculous but this will all be cured later. We will fill the empty spots with a really dark color to make the image really dark and scary looking. You must not have these areas left empty. Otherwise, the whole image will look like an abstract clown.

STEP 4.

This is the last and final step to the tutorial. As you can see all of those empty areas have been filled in. Look how much different the image looks with all that filled in! The image definitely looks creepy and very depressingly dark. I use this dark and smudged effect in all of my portraits. Its my secret to making all my images look good. This seriously looks like an awesome scary Heath Ledger Joker.

STEP 5.

Well, this is what your image's outcome should look like. I know the colored version looks better but the black and white looks good too. Anyways, this image was originally drawn with Adobe Photoshop CS. I used a reference of the Heath Ledger Joker online to create this one. It took me plenty of hours to get the image exactly right. The coloring took me even more time. Anyways, I done this tutorial because of the new Batman movie (the Dark Knight) is out. So since Heath Ledger died, I wanted to make an awesome joker of him before he passed away. So I hope you all enjoyed my tutorial!

STEP 6.

In this step I give you the colors of the natural joker's image. Use the colors above to color your image. These are the same colors i used in the image. I know in the image there are darker reds and grays. This is because I used shading and highlighting. This makes the image more realistic and smooth. In the next step I will teach you how to smudge colors together.

STEP 7.

First get out your smudge tool. Set the opacity to 50 percent. This can be found on the top of the Adobe Photoshop window. You must first set your colors on a separate layer before smudging. So after you got your colors set, start smudging the hard edged areas. This will make your image nice and soft. This is how I come out with a portrait affected image. After you smudged all your hard edges start shading and highlighting!

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